Their table’s population hadn’t dissolved so much into wider circulation in this dessert-and-cigar phase. They sat formed into one convivial group, including Strabo Blandiana, Naomi Kandel, and David Blaine, with Richard dominating the conversation. “… these floor-length urinals, all arranged in somber rows, and everybody pissing in silence, the Stonehenge restroom was a more holy scene than Stonehenge by far, I’m telling you…”
His audience was rapt, including Georgina. The two seemed to have receded into some glow even deeper than sexual satiation, though I couldn’t give it a name. Was Richard some bore who told this story everywhere? Perhaps Stonehenge restroom was a trigger phrase, a code Richard Abneg had to let drop each time he mingled in the world of wealth and privilege, until the time he heard the reply come back to him, the shrouded reply that would foment revolution. I had Perkus, here at my side, to blame for the plague of overinterpretation that left me feeling that Richard was trying to communicate something to me personally: much of my whole life had been a kind of Stonehenge restroom, a cartoon of depth, in the shadows of some large truth before which I’d balked.
Well, I had a code word to lay on Richard in return. I had to get him away from the table, though. Strabo Blandiana was obviously party to chaldron manipulations, but he was too much a pet of power to be trusted. Naomi Kandel, too, though I liked her. She was a sieve of gossip. I thought of how in my earlier innocence I’d mentioned chaldrons directly to Maud Woodrow and Sharon Spencer, and shuddered. I trusted no one with whom I hadn’t smoked Ice. I leaned in and asked Richard if I could have a word with him. He saw Perkus at my shoulder and scowled, but excused himself. The table’s others looked us over and shrugged, returning to other talk.
“I would have come over, but I saw you two consorting with that eagle hugger, Epping.”
“Sandra,” I said, hoping to humanize her. “My mom. She doesn’t mean any harm.”
“I had to hire a licensed ornithologist to get a few keepsakes out of that eagle hatchery that was once my apartment. He went in dressed in a suit of leather armor.”
Perkus leaned in, impatient with our small talk. “So, there’s a chaldron upstairs, Abneg.”
I saw Richard make the same conjugation I’d done, so recently. Automatic skepticism couldn’t hide what went deeper than curiosity, straight to appetite. He first had to put up a front, though. “Funny you should say that, Tooth. Because looking at you, I was thinking you’d come dressed as a chaldron, and I was going to have to explain how it wasn’t Halloween.”
Perkus never seemed more valiant than when faced with Richard’s or Oona’s glibbest mockery. “It never snows on Halloween, even I know that.”
“So you were just rummaging around in the mayor’s belongings and you happened to come across this… chaldron?” In the hitch in his speech I saw how, like me, Richard had tried to control thoughts of chaldrons by censoring the word. Uselessly.
“He’s got it mounted on a high shelf, out of reach,” said Perkus. “It’s a tricky spot, on a curved wall. We’re going to need an extension ladder.” His leaps to the next implausible thought would have seemed more outrageous if they didn’t anticipate my own.
“What are you guys, the Marx Brothers?” said Richard. “Stay cool, for fuck’s sake, and let me have a look at this so-called chaldron before you start burgling.”
“Should we include Georgina?” I suggested, excited to restore the whole team. This was strategic as well as generous: I wanted to gather up Oona, too, and I remembered how the two women had bonded at Gracie Mews.
Richard Abneg darted a look back at the table, where Georgina remained caught up in glamorous attentions. She seemed to feel his eyes, and glanced back. He smiled at her, but shook his head at us. “No, no shenanigans for the Hawkman tonight,” he warned. “I’ll go. You two keep a handle on yourselves.”
I wanted to remind Richard he was the first to bring Bolshevik rage into this pursuit-to propose seizing the chaldrons of the rich. I suppose then he hadn’t had Arnheim in mind. But my tongue was clotted with smoke and drink. Anyway, Perkus, looking not in the least hurt about Marx Brothers or shenanigans, with full faith in the persuasiveness of what awaited, gave chaldron-spotting instructions. Then, putting finger to lips, extra admonishment to good behavior in his absence, gait revealing the eagerness I’d likely also displayed, Richard slipped upstairs.
The decadence that mobbed around us now seemed worse than random, the scrollwork ceiling itself, the wide shadowy stair, the four walls, all a pen for conspirators, villainous overbidders. How many of them hoarded chaldrons at home? I’d never look at Strabo Blandiana or Steve Martin the same way. (Grinspoon I couldn’t quantify-either he’d betrayed the trust of the chaldron controllers, or was a conspirator so secure he felt free to taunt us.) I wanted to round up the catering staff for protection, make them a proletarian corps, radicalizing them instantly with a glimpse of chaldron. The selfishness I’d felt upstairs turned itself inside out, for an instant. Then reversed again. My little gang was fine. I didn’t want to share so promiscuously. I only had to tell Oona, immediately. Again I dragged Perkus, against the grain of the party, which seemed arranged to deny us movement in the mayor’s direction. Some music had been started, and it floated overhead, chunks of oppressive jazz. I lowered my head, ignoring shouted greetings, shunning the call of my own decorousness for once.
I found myself at a juncture where I could neither advance nor retreat, but did catch Oona’s eye. I motioned for her to join us where we stood, aware my gesticulations had become wild, yet willing to play Perkus’s card, and let my clownishness protect me from any suspicion.
“You found your friend,” she said when she reached us. “Was he rolled up in a rug somewhere? Because you both look a little wrinkled and flustered, if you don’t mind my saying so. Also your eyeballs are pink. Hello, Perkus.” She waved at him as if swabbing a dirty pane between them. Without Noteless nearby Oona had gone into her chipper routine.
“Listen, Oona, have we ever discussed chaldrons?” I honestly wasn’t sure.
“I never figured I’d be very good with chaldrons,” she said. “Though I’ve never been asked in the pluperfect before, I’ll admit that. When you put it so charmingly, I might have to reconsider.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry-little boytrons and girltrons, cleaning their poop trails and teaching them alphabeticals, isn’t that what we were discussing?”
“Seriously, Oona. We found one.”
“I think you can get a medal for that, if you redeem them at a police station.”
Perkus interrupted. “Forget it, Oona, it isn’t your kind of thing.” The old petulance between them was always near the surface. “I could have told you not to bother, Chase.”
“Ah, more boy games, I should have known.” Now she feigned hurt. I saw we couldn’t win with Oona, not in our present condition, doubly or triply intoxicated. She’d only take pleasure in running rings around us. Since Richard had excluded Georgina, I couldn’t precisely argue Oona’s point. Mind’s-eyeing Abneg alone with the prize, my suspicion now forked: What if, holy smokes, it was Richard we shouldn’t trust? He’d co-opted to the mayor everything placed in his care-what kind of fools were we, after all? That we had Georgina in our clutches might be our only insurance. So we needed to take the Hawkman hostage-that’s how far I’d gone down this slippery slope, before Richard rejoined us, and a hungry, Rasputin glint in his eyes told me all I needed to know about his allegiances. The party erupted in laughter and applause, and for an instant I thought we were being mocked for our transparent plotting. But no, some unseen voice had dragged the room back to toasting. Under cover of huzzahs we resumed skulduggery. Oona was meanwhile our bewildered witness.
“You should leave this to me,” Richard began.
“Not on your life.” Perkus had spotted the thing tonight, as he had to begin with, and was in every sense our spearhead into chaldrondom.